Oregon Teen, Blue Kalmbach, Gets 11 Years for Swastika Carving

PORTLAND, Ore. — An Oregon teenager who carved a swastika into another teen's forehead as he and others tortured the boy has been sentenced to 11 years in prison. In a Portland courtroom Thursday, 16-year-old Blue Kalmbach told the victim in a barely audible voice that he was "very sincerely sorry." Kalmbach was the last of four teenagers to be sentenced in the case.

"It's almost impossible to imagine this could happen between friends, but it did," Multnomah County Judge Jean Kerr Maurer said when accepting Kalmbach's guilty pleas on kidnapping, robbery and assault charges. Police and prosecutors said the teens spent the evening before the February attack sketching out ideas for torturing the victim. Before Kalmbach carved the swastika with a box-cutter style of knife, they shot the victim with a BB gun, forced him to eat cat feces and hit with him a crow bar and cricket-type bat. The victim, bangs covering his forehead, sat with his mother and girlfriend in court. He did not make a statement or speak with reporters.